Styx is Just A River
by hodag
Summary: Violet failed her first life, and was mistakenly called to Zaibach as their answer to the girl from the mystic moon, who can influence destiny and see through stealth cloaks. She must use all of her cold cunning to avoid certain imprisonment and death, once they discover the limits of her abilities. First person POV, focusing on Folken, Dilandau and the Dragon Slayers.
1. Jump

Today was the day. This was the end, the final straw. If he hadn't taken my dog, I probably would've decided not to kill myself. I would've gone home, played with her, fixed myself a frozen meal, had a beer, and I probably would've cried too. For a long time. Today my job had finally taken everything from me: my life, now my boyfriend. He said I worked too long hours and that I wasn't happy anymore.

This was true. The happy part. I couldn't remember the last time I had been happy. The strain of the initial round of applications, then the looming stress of the match, and now the constant stink of shame and failure as I walked the halls the of the dead. This was my intern year, and it had killed the person I was.

I decided not to leave a suicide note, it was too macabre. I did decide to be symbolic about it. I loaded up a backpack with my constant companions of the past eight years: Harrison's Internal Medicine, Netter's atlas, white coat, stethoscope. I chose the backpack with the Poland flag patch on it, with the patch of by rugby league back when I played. The outfit that I had worn to work was adequate to die in. It was a sweater dress, grey cable knit and I had my tie, lace-up ankle boots. I always had thought that they were sexy; and I smiled as the tears coursed down my face as I picture them on a ledge. I cried quickly before I left and my hands shook as I locked the door. I have always been doggedly stubborn once I made up my mind, and this was no exception. My mind was made up.

It had not been a quick decision, and falling had been a fantasy of mine for a while.

I drove my car, an old 1980 green Audi to a parking ramp near the river. Chicago was bright and cold in the January night. The sky beyond the sky scrapers was a profound, inky black. I knew better though. I was from North Dakota, up on the cold prairie, where the sky was bright and endless at night, the glittering bend of the Milky Way a comfort on moonless nights. I thought briefly of my small rural high school, and my junior year boyfriend, who now worked the oil fields.

These reflections served as a comfort as I walked to my final destiny. I had on my sweater dress, my long coat, my backpack full of books. I thought about leaving the coat, but figured that as it got water logged it would help me to sink. I crossed the bridge over the Chicago River to the middle, between two lights. It was fairly late at night, as I hadn't gotten off until around 10. Will had left that morning, and I had been late to rounds. I'd had to do payback by writing all of my senior's notes that day. And someone had died, and that seem to prove that the rhythm of life is chaos and loss. I looked to the north and south sides of the bridge, and saw no pedestrians. Probably too cold. I'd heard that hypothermia was not a bad way to go. There were no cars coming for a moment. I was alone and surrounded by thousands. I straddled the marble railing and swung my legs to the other side. I rested them gingerly on the other side, my balance precarious and my arms holding on behind me. I had a moment of misgiving. Then I heard someone scream, and a car began to honk its horn. I had been seen. It was this or inpatient psych.

I looked up at the black sky, and let go with my arms while stepping forward with my right. There was a rush of air.

There was no splash. That was the first thing I realized. The second thing was that my right hip hurt, and my hand did too. My shoulders ached from the chafing of my back pack. I was surrounded by tall grass, soft grey in the night, and the ground was firmly packed dry soil.

The stars were beautiful, even more so than back home. I could clearly see the lighter blue band of the Milky Way against the rich cobalt. Had that been it? So painless, so easy?

That was when I heard voices. Young men, speaking in a thick dialect that I couldn't place, as it was neither Spanish, nor Chinese, nor Cajun. It sounded like a hybrid between Russian and German, percussive the way English is. I gathered only a few words here and there before I caught the rhythm: "this way", and "here". I heard rustling through the grass, and a metallic clanging that was chilling; the sound of metal that had been sharpened for death. I froze and lowered myself to ground. They were in front of me, slightly to the right and moving closer.

I had been the fastest girl in my high school. Not a huge accomplishment, given the size of the school, but I knew I was fast. I slid off the backpack, and angled my body away from them in tiny, incremental movements. I shifted my right thigh underneath me and it tensed, ready to do my bidding. I heard a call of a different male voice, again off to my right but further back from the other two. I exploded forward with the sound, stumbling at first on the uneven ground in my damn shoes then finding my footing. I pushed as hard as I could, pumped my arms, but they were faster than I. The first one tackled me to the ground and quickly tied my hands behind my back.

"I have her!" he yelled to his companions.

"Good."

"Now we can get out of here. We were never supposed to be here in the first place. Probably a miscalculation."

"Miscalculation? I doubt that very much, Miguel." The one named Miguel, the one who had tackled me, heaved me up on my feet. I didn't get a good look at his features in the dark.

"You take her. I did all the work." He pushed me in the direction of the other man, who was taller but had a lighter, more lilting voice. He placed his hand on the ropes which bound my hands tightly. I could barely move them and soon gave up trying. I stumbled along beside him, through the clearing where I had…landed? There was very real fear growing in my belly. Once in the forest I tripped over roots and had branches slice my face. I settled into a sort of numb following, and I don't know for how long we walked. My captor was silent ahead of my keeper and I. I had the impression that they were trying to make as little noise as possible, and that the two were somewhat nervous. At length there were more men, and a little beyond that there were-I don't know what they were.

They were huge, metal. The metal was shiny, probably the kind that they use to panel cars. They had a vaguely hominid shape, but weren't quite right, in that they gave you that sick feeling like nails on a terra cotta pot. They made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He pushed me close up to one.

"Will you let her down Dalet?" he asked. I thought he was referring to me, but the machine soon settled to ground. He opened a compartment on the back, and, though it was black in the woods, I could've sworn that he looked at me with pity. Someone lifted my legs and I was tossed in.

I've never been claustrophobic; in fact, I've always sought out small dark places. But this was cold and the shutting of the metal door was so final. I scrabbled on the side with my hands, and the heel of my left hand caught a screw and began to bleed. The door didn't give at all, not in the slightest. I settled back onto my bottom, sucking at the blood from my left hand. My clinical mind, silent against the gale of animal emotions, helpfully offered up that I was up to date on my tetanus shots. The metal was uncomfortable. I sat in the dark for perhaps fifteen minutes. There was a sudden noise, whirl of gears and pumping of hydraulics. The ground moved and I had the sensation of being lifted up. Almost as soon as I realized that the compartment I was in had stopped moving, there was a momentous shifting and we began to move forward in a rocking fashion that was not at all smooth. I was balanced on all fours. There was a change in the noise that the machine made and a sudden heat. The center of gravity shifted abruptly, and I was thrown off of my precarious balance, like a dog in an SUV.

When it hit me that nothing was below me, I panicked. I lost whatever tenuous grasp I had had on the situation and began to weep, interrupted with occasional piercing screams that echoed in my metal coffin.


	2. Empire

I became somewhat conscious again when the center of gravity again shifted to where it had been previously. There was that same pendulous gait, which I could only assume was this machine walking.

The machine came to a stop. The hissing of steam ceased, the whirling of gears slowed. The machine made some clicks, like all machines do when they come to rest. I backed as far away from where I thought the door was. In here was likely safer than out there.

There was a cacophony of voices, and the ground shook with the weight of what I assumed were other machines ambulating. The hatch opened and I was blind for a moment in the bright, cool light. My elbows were grabbed and I was pulled forward and set on my feet by two strong arms on my elbows. We stood on a metal gangway. There were several levels, two above me and one below, and they shifted as the soldiers left their huge armor. The hand was firm to the small of my back, and we walked forward, towards a large metal deck. We descended a few stairs down to the platform. The soldiers, all in shiny blue armor with designs painted on the shoulder, and leather, lined formerly on the side of the deck opposite me. They all had swords, big, curved ones. I think they were called katanas. For the most part, the soldiers were male and Caucasian. They were uniformly young. One blonde one in particularly looked like he had just barely started puberty. Some of the others had stubble on clean-shaven chins. Two, a male and a female, had long purple hair. The one who held my arms had soft, sandy blonde hair, same color as Will's, a color that when girls have it they always dye to blonde. His eyes were blue and his face pleasing.

There were heavy footsteps descending to the deck from a higher gangway level, and the soldiers' attention instantly focused there.

He was albino. No, that wasn't quite right; his hair was silver. Gossamer, actually, was the first word to come to mind. His armor was red and it was clear that he was the one in charge. He was a born athlete, it was clear from how he moved. There was no heaviness to his gait despite the armor. He was beautiful in the way that finely bred horse are beautiful. I looked at him clinically, the thinking muscles between my eyes furrowed: what was he? He descended to the deck level, and it took me this long to realize that the soldiers around me had bowed.

"Don't stare," he said coolly, grabbing my chin in his hand and thrusting my head back. I had no doubt that he could've snapped my mandible in two if he had so desired.

"Who found her," he asked but it wasn't a question.

"I did, my lord," a familiar voice with far less confidence answered. He came forward and I got a much better look at him. Miguel was on the older end of the spectrum, in terms of these young men, and he had the stubble to prove it. His hair was brown and his skin was dark, and he held my backpack in front of him. He received a fractional nod in acknowledgement.

"This is she?" another man's voice asked, coming from behind the lines of soldiers. They parted and a much taller man strode forward. This one had the build of a quarterback, tall and slim though still powerful. His hair was a very light blue and it looked natural in a strange way. He radiated excitement, and separated me from the man who held my arm. He walked around me, and it was I who was examined. I realized at this moment that aside from the one tough-appearing woman soldier, I was the only girl here. Things could disintegrate quickly. Rapey was the word that came to mind. I wasn't dead, and these people did not belong to the world I lived in, I was fairly sure. Before pondering the implications of some sort of space-time travel, I recognized that I had no idea what women in this culture wore, and accepted the fact that I may have been extraordinarily under dressed. This made me nervous.

"Is this her?" the captain asked.

"It has to be," the older, taller man said in a voice of bourbon and oak, "We shall take her to the Emperor. He will be anxious to know if we have been successful."

"Indeed." The tone was bored.

The tall one reached towards my arm, and his arm was a claw, fastened in ivory and wire. I'd never seen its like and I blatantly stared. He looked uncomfortable, almost embarrassed, and he nearly tucked his arm back in his cloak when my other elbow was grabbed roughly by the captain.

"Don't want to keep him waiting," he said in a lilting tone, that was maybe meant to be funny but it wasn't.

They lead me out the hangar, and down several dark corridors of shiny black stone. Blue flame flickered from the sconces on the wall, leaving flickering shadows made of the stuff of vague fears. We walked for perhaps fifteen minutes, passing numerous closed metal doors. For the most part the place felt like a warren, and Fiver's vision of the hall of bones flitted briefly through my mind. There was one open area that we passed through, but it was so dark that I was only aware of space that was there and then suddenly was not.

"You needn't handle her so roughly. She has no where to run," the taller one said. The captain grunted and dropped my arm. I followed them dumbly. Now that they were no longer slowed by hauling me, the two quickly lengthened their strides, and it was all I could do to keep up without breaking into a run. We paused in front of door, and the tall one opened it.

I was expecting some sort of receiving hall, or throne room. Instead there was only a large cloth screen that I instinctively knew was a projector. It flickered to life. Now I thought of Oz. The tall man flitted with some dials on a podium beside me.

An old man's face appeared on the screen, distorted heavily. The two men prostrated themselves, and because I didn't move, I looked eye to eye with the emperor. His gaze was penetrating and fierce but I met it.

"Where do you come from?" the Emperor asked of me, his voice booming from speakers near a podium. Absurdly, I replied with the biggest city near my hometown.

"Fargo North Dakota," I replied. The old man beamed, he even laughed. I had the distinct impression that he didn't understand what I said.

"Are you a seer?" he asked.

"Excuse me?" A shadow of disappointment fell over his face and his tone was markedly less delighted.

"With your permission, my lord. He is wondering if you have ever seen the future or-"

"Influenced destiny," the old man on the screen completed.

"I don't think so," I said quietly. There was a very pregnant silence.

"Is it possible, my lord, that her powers have not yet manifested?"

"In theory, but-how old are you?"

"Twenty three."

"She's a little old to have never manifested. Some women manifest when they bear." Nausea and fear pulled me very quickly in their undertow.

"Have you borne children?" asked the tall man, looking at me very intently. There was a very small spark of pity in his eyes, which were the color of venous blood, and I reached out of my panic in response to the sympathy there.

"No." But please save me.

The Emperor appeared deep in thought. I could feel the irritation rolling off of the captain.

"Do you read fortunes?" the emperor asked.

"No," I replied, "I'm a physician."

I don't think I could have said anything more shocking. The captain looked at me with a deeply furrowed brow, while the tall one's jaw dropped open and his eyes narrowed. The Emperor maintained his composure more neatly. Finally, he chuckled.

"You may decide what you wish to do with her, Folken. It is possible that she has not manifested yet." Abruptly the transmission clicked off.

The Captain laughed. It was one quarter-note loaded with derision and dismissal. He shook his head at Folken and stalked out of the room.

We stood in the dark without speaking. I shifted my weight from foot to foot.

"Come this way," he said and I followed him back into the dark corridors.

I realized that the only words I had spoken so far were" Fargo North Dakota, No, and I'm a physician". That was essentially all there was to it. Other people I'm sure would've spoken, but I had become some used to being mute and invisible, being always the least senior member of the team, that I did not speak. Words can be incriminating sometimes, or apparently damning and everything that I had said so far was wrong.

We entered another room. This one was filled with books. A huge window took up one whole wall, and before it was a large desk with one chair in front of it and one behind it. There were two celestial objects in the sky and I stumbled across the room, forgetting the man Folken and everything else. I knew what the other object was in my stomach, it took slower to actually process the word.

Earth. I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was a warm, companionable touch, and I almost dissolved into tears. It was the first time here, actually the first time all day, that I had been treated like a person. I didn't cry though, partly because I was so tired, and partially because North Dakotans don't cry in front of other people.

"I'm sorry," he said in that rich, deep voice, "Have a seat-" He suddenly blanched.

"I am so very sorry. In all of this, I never asked you your name. That was rude of me. Please forgive me." He gestured to the chair opposite the window. I sat in front of his desk like a kid in a principal's office.

"My name is Violet O'Connor."

"Ah. The lady Violet," he said, scanning the papers on his desk.

"It's actually Dr. O'Connor, if you are using an honorific." I said this quietly.

"Is it true?" he asked. He pulled out two glasses and a glass decanter of wine.

"Yes. Where am I?" There was panic in my voice as I looked up at Earth. Maybe I was dead. Or this was purgatory.

"Zaibach, right on the border of Astoria. This place is called Gaea," he said and when there was no recognition on my face, he said with a trace of wonder "You really are from the Mystic Moon, aren't you?"

"If the Mystic Moon is there," I pointed out the window, "Then I suppose so." He got up and shuffled through some papers. I gratefully took a sip of my wine. It was a very herbal red, not a lot a tannins nor jam. I hadn't eaten anything since the vending machine sandwich I had eaten for lunch in between an admission and that patient dying so the wine went to my head. I saw her face briefly, hallows in her cheeks and sunken eyes. Thankfully she had been DNR, so her passing was painless and we didn't have to code her. Where was she now? I felt very heavy all of a sudden, and I took a deep breath and another sip of wine. Folken came around next to me, and very gently spread a map in front of me. It was a child's map of the world, full of cartoon cats and monkeys. The illustration style was familiar, I think Richard Scary?

"Can you show me where you are from? Where is North Dakota?" I gestured on the map.

There was a knock at the door. At Folken's assent, it opened to reveal Miguel, who had my backpack.

"Lord Dilandau thought you might like to see this," he said and handed it to Folken. Folken took out Harrison's and briefly flipped through it. He picked up Netter next, and this held his attention as he slowly flipped through the pictures of human anatomy.

"It is true, then," he whispered, tracing an illustration of the thorax with his hand.

"There's this too." Miguel handed him my bunched up white coat and a stethoscope. Folken nodded to Miguel in dismissal and picked up my stethoscope.

"I've seen our apothacaries with these," he said, flipping it over in his hands. He was enraptured with these objects, and his face burned with consuming curiousity. He stuck the stethoscope in his ears, but he put the earpieces in backwards. I gestured with my hands for him to flip it the other way, which he did, and then promptly stuck the bell on his chest. His face lit up when he heard his heart sounds. I sat patiently, barely able to keep my eyes open.

"I'm sorry," he said after about fifteen minutes of pouring over books. I snapped back to attention; I'm fairly sure I was asleep.

"I imagine that you have some questions."

"Where am I?"

"Zaibach," he said patiently.

"What's Zaibach? Why am I here? Why is everyone asking if I'm a psychic?"

"Zaibach is a country," he gestured to it on a map that hung on the wall to my right, "And we are at war. It's a war to safe people from obliviousness, from death. We have summoned you from the Mystic Moon because there are those who do not desire their subjects to be emancipated from ignorance, and one of these, a king, has acquired a girl from the Mystic Moon who sees the future, and who can see through our stealth cloaks. We had hoped that you might be our version of this girl, and so we summoned you."

"I'm sorry," I mumbled.

"I wouldn't be so quick to assume that you are the wrong girl. Many months went into this research. At the very least, your medical knowledge will be useful. I will have a meeting set up with our sorceror on board tomorrow; I would be very curious to see what overlaps there exist between your medicine and alchemy." I nodded.

"And you will excuse me for saying this, my lady, but you really do look quite exhausted. You've come a long way." He smiled warmly, and his voice was soft and soothing.

"I'm hungry too," I said.

"Of course." He stood and placed all of my things back into the backpack. I was shown to a small room, no more than a cupboard, really, with a small attached bathroom. I sat down on the bed, and I was asleep before I was even fully laying down.


	3. Examinations

Chapter 4

My dreams that night were strange, vivid dreams.

The river flooded every year. Sometimes more, sometimes less. There were a few years when we had to abandon the house. I'd grab all of my most valued possessions, perhaps a teddy bear or a sticker book, and when we drove away we never knew if we'd see the house again. The worst was when my dad would make his way across the brown fields to sandbag. I hated him so close to the river, running high and greedy. Any second it could decide to grab him. As the man of the house, though, it was his job and duty to make the dike every year so I'd hold my breath and watch out of the upstairs window. One year, though, I couldn't stand the thought. I begged him not to go, I grabbed his legs and screamed. Finally, I made myself so upset that I started throwing up. He stayed because I was sick, and that was the day that the water crested the dike and our neighbor was drowned. Tornados I didn't fear, because you could maybe outrun one. Floods happened fast and there was nothing you could do.

I was in high school. There was a girl that I didn't much like, and we were in the green room behind the school auditorium, having a passive aggressive fight and pretending we were friends. As she reached up to put a costume in the cupboard, I knew in a flash that her mother had died in a car accident that afternoon and the girl didn't know yet. I excused myself from the room when her phone rang.

I dreamed through every code I'd been in. I'd known, before the chest compressions had started, whether or not the person would make it through.

When I woke, I felt like I had slept for days. There was a window in my little cupboard, and it looked like it was midmorning on a cloudless day. A tray of cold soup and crusty bread rested beside the door. I sat on the floor and mindlessly ate. Then I washed. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to leave my room and find someone, or if I should wait here to be found. I waited indecisively for about an hour. During that time, I looked out of my window, and realized that I was on some kind of zeppelin or something because the ground was moving very slowly a mile below me. I thought about the dreams. I didn't know what to make of them; I was very familiar with the feeling I got about which people would live and which would die. I guess I assumed that I subconsciously processed all the information and came to a conclusion, not that I just knew or that it was due to some kind of psychic power.

I dumped the contents of my backpack out. White coat with my name embroidered on the pocket-this I realized could be a very real danger, full of antibiotic resistant bacteria and other horrible things that might not exist here yet. I jammed it under my bed, resolving to ask to have it bleached or something later. I had the coat I had been wearing when I came over, a grey, military-style trench of warm wool. There was a second large pocket of the backpack that up until this point I had forgotten about. I laughed with joy when I opened it. The last time I had used this backpack was when I had gone to visit my friends in Sioux Falls. One pair of flannel pj bottoms, a pair of jeans, a baseball tee shirt, chuck taylors; all things that I had never unpacked, and then given up for lost. I changed out of my patterned tights and the grey sweater dress and gratefully put on more comfortable clothing. Then I waited.

At length I left the room and began to meander pointlessly down the metal hallways. I passed the occasional guard, in full armor and standing still at attention. The first time they made me nervous and I was afraid they would tell me to go away, or escort me back to my rooms, but they were like the British guards and did not move.

The men in blue exercised in a gymnasium below me. Right now they were running in circles around the gym, the captain in the lead with an easy stride. They had weights on their arms and ankles, and I think they wore them on their backs and chests as well. Unlike the rooms I had seen so far, this was brightly lit, both from large windows and from warm overheat lights that emitted a yellow light, rather than blue. I sat perched on the railing and watched. They finished their laps then moved to push ups, sit ups. They set up what looked like circuits with the weights. For this portion the captain walked among them and yelled at them. He would occasionally perform a station, but spent most of time policing them. Having nothing to do, I just watched. It was relaxing, but a little anxiety provoking to be doing nothing. And I still had so many questions, and my role in Zaibach, I guess, was still unclear.

"I had looked for you in your quarters," Folken said from behind me, sounding irritated.

"I'm sorry," I said, my heart in my throat. I wondered how they killed people on board, or if they just threw them off.

"Come this way."

The room was hung with skeletons of small animals, and the walls were painted with runes. There were no windows here, only those eerie blue torches. A small man enveloped in dark velvet robes rose to great us, and inclined his head in Folken's direction. He had a small blue goatee and his bald head was circumferentially tattooed with triangles, with the exception of his forehead, where a blue circle was tattooed in between his eyes.

"So this is the girl from the Mystic Moon," he said wonderingly, looking me up and down.

"Her name is Violet O'Connor. She claims to be a physician," Folken said to him.

"I had heard," the sorcerer said. He gestured to a bench-style table with two chairs on either side. Folken melted into the shadows, choosing a chair in the corner. I sat opposite of the sorcerer uncertainly. The chair had a short leg and wobbled when I shifted my weight backwards. The sorcerer moved to a cabinet behind him and produced a glass flask with deep purple liquid inside. This he poured into a small tumbler, and placed in front of me. I didn't move to take it.

"Well. Drink," he ordered crisply as he set the flask back into the cabinet.

"I don't know what it is," I said.

"Refreshment."

"I don't believe you." Folken chuckled in the corner; it was the purring of a tiger. The sorcerer shot him an angry look and grabbed the tumbler away from me. He poured it back into the flask, muttering.

"Fine," he said and grabbed a necklace from a pocket of his robe, "I will have to hypnotize her." He sounded like it was great inconvenience for him.

"Just bring her deep enough to relax her," Folken said. The sorcerer gave an exasperated sigh, thrust the necklace back in his pocket and returned to the cabinet and looked within, evidentially not finding what he sought. Folken moved from the corner and his long arms reached around the sorcerer, and returned with a bottle, followed by three wine glasses on his second reach. He poured a measure of wine in each and set two on the table. He retired to the corner with his third. The wine was delicious and very relaxing. Because I was hungry and thirsty, I drank mine rather faster than was wise. My glass was quickly refilled. It was very alcoholic wine, and I felt sloppy and at ease.

"How came you to call yourself physicker?" the sorcerer asked.

"I skipped two grades and graduated from Tulane a year early, then I went up to University of Michigan for medical school. I matched at Cook County for residency. I took the medical licensing exam." The sorcerer's quill scratched furiously on the paper as I spoke. I had a feeling that though Folken didn't write, he would remember all of this.

"How would you fix a wandering aura?" the sorcerer shot. I stared at him dumbly. He looked knowingly at Folken, triumph in his eyes.

"How would you treat stop a man from changing into a woman?"

"Excuse me?"

"When a man acquires the breast and belly of a woman with child," the sorcerer replied smugly.

"Where they have yellow skin, and bruise easily?" I asked.

"Yes I suppose they do," the sorcerer said with less enthusiasm.

"They have end stage liver disease; the cow is already out of the barn. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot that you can do, other than make sure that they poop regularly. They should probably stop drinking liquor too. If you can get them a new liver, maybe, I don't know if you guys able to do that."

The sorcerer looked incredulous. I grabbed the paper from underneath his hand, and snatched the quill. I drew a person from the front. There were lots of arrows and little words, but at the end it was a good schema, despite the difficulties I had using the quill.

"Oh, and they aren't changing their sex. They have a big belly because of fluid accumulation and get breasts because they aren't able to metabolize estrogen." The tenor of the conversation shifted from this point, and even as inebriated as I was, I knew that finally they believed me. The questioning continued, but it was clear that I knew more than him. There were one or two things were I had no idea what they were talking about, but the wine made me cocky and I made up something, using words like "complement" and "fibroblast". Once I even had the hubris to tell him that something he asked me about didn't exist. They accepted my every word.

After the questioning, I was led out of the room and they leaned me against the wall. I was so drunk that it was everything I could do to stay upright. I don't know how long the sorcerer talked to Folken, but by the time they came out to get me my knees were about to buckle. My vision was swimming. I eventually wound up in my bed but I don't know how long it took me to get there or how.


	4. Hung Over and Elsewhere

When I awoke, it was evening. I was wide awake, with the slight headache and stomach ache that comes from drinking too much. I wanted to curl up in the bed and fall asleep again but I felt too sweaty and gross.

I stalked down metal corridors, up and down staircases. I felt acutely homesick and scared. There was no one around; the last the guards were several hallways ago. The windows offered a view of dark pastoral lands, with the same stars that I knew well and the two moons in sky, one of which was home. I sat down heavily on a metal staircase, my arms resting on my knees. This place felt like a hospital. I wondered if I could live in this ship in the same manner as a mouse or a rat, filching things here and there and living for the most part in darkened corridors and broom closets. I chuckled at the mental image of myself sneaking around a corner, so fast that only the flickering of a shadow was visible to perhaps the next girl that they summoned. She would look up at Folken, afraid and uncertain, and he would reassure her, saying "that's only feral Violet. She went insane." My humor soured quickly. Perhaps there was a portion of this floating fortress where the mad girls were held, the seers and the fortune tellers screaming lunatic prophesies like the cries of tropical birds.

This was an unsettling thought, and as much as I didn't want to dwell on it, there was something definitely disquieting about this place and I thought back to the sorcerer's room with the skeletons and the runes. With definite intention, I packed up those feelings and tossed them away to a remote, dark corner of my brain, the part where the poisonous flowers grew.

I stood up and dusted off my pants though the floors were impeccably clean, and I set back the way that I came. I made a few wrong turns, but was always able to backtrack.

By the time I made it back to my room, I was fully tired and the little cupboard felt something like home. I picked up the tray of food outside my room, and ate on the floor before returning to bed.

I was embarrassed when Folken came for me the next day. I was worried that I had made an ass out of myself by being drunk, or that I had failed the test. Instead, he led me to a large, white room that was just two hallways away from the docks where the mecha were housed. He gestured broadly to the empty room and looked at me with an expectant smile. I smiled uncertainly back and nodded.

"This is yours," he stated gravely. I said nothing but continued to look confused.

"For treating the soldiers," he explained, "We are docking today to pick up supplies. Tell me what you will need."

"So you believe me now."

"You ran circles around poor Quentain," he chuckled.

"Even though I was, ah, intoxicated."

"That made it even better. I think your knowledge easily surpasses his. Although I doubt you will be delivering many infants," he said with a broad smile.

"I talked about that?" I muttered.

"Yes. I'm sorry, we had to make sure you wouldn't lie, so I gave you the wine."

"It was different wine from what I had the first day."

"It was indeed. This wine is made in northern Zaibach, from the final fall crop of grapes and is left to ferment longer."

"Making it much stronger," I finished. I finally felt at ease around him. I'd won my safety.

"It's Dilandau's favorite," Folken continued as I began to inspect my room.

"Who is Dilandau?"

"He is the commander of the dragon slayers. He wears the red armor," Folken gestured to his chest in explanation. He was trying to make conversation. He was trying to invent reasons to stay with me. I blushed a little when I realized this, and I went out of my way to avoid looking at him. This was hard; as I walked through the room he was always at my side, smiling and eager to gauge my expression as I looked at empty corners.

"If he's commanding men, he should probably drink something less potent," I said. Folken laughed.

"I've been trying to tell him that for years."

"Well, I suppose it's better for him to be a little buzzed than actively withdrawing. How much does he drink?"

"That is none of your business," said a cold, high voice. We both jumped and spun around. The Captain, Dilandau leaned against the doorframe casually but his voice was anything but.

"I'm sorry."

"Folken, I'd like a word. I had heard that you and that sorcerer have deemed it appropriate for this _woman_ to treat my men, without my consent." He waved his arm dismissively at me. Folken straightened to his full height and made no move to move forward.

"Dr. O'Connor demonstrated that she has medical knowledge that far exceeds Quentain's."

"As much as I love hearing that our hack of a sorcerer was exposed to be a fraud, I still object."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, you don't have the authority to promote medical officers, whereas I do." The two men stared daggers at each other. Both had red eyes not quite the same shade. Garnets and rubies.

"She will treat the first one of you that comes through her door."

"Well, I can see that your medical ward is as big of a fantasy as her so-called expertise, so I look forward to seeing how this goes. If she kills one of my men, I will kill her and use her blood to paint my alsedies." He spun abruptly around and clanged down the hall.

"He doesn't mean it," Folken said adamantly, but I doubted that very much.

We next set about to making a list. I requested any medical text or hedge witch manual that he could get a hold of, and drew out what I wanted my exam table to look like. I requested small curved needles and catgut suture. I wanted every common medicinal plant that he could find. I wanted a note book, a blood pressure cuff, and the strongest clear alcohol that he could acquire, which he noted shouldn't be too hard as Dilandau had an adequate amount in his personal stores.

Folken appeared excited to build the machines that I drew. He had an engineer's mind, and looked forward to designing these things for me. It was not an unpleasant afternoon and we spent several hours in this fashion until he was finally summoned by one of his guards. I remained seated in what would be my exam room, and I wrote several other things on the list and described them in detail. For example, I requested cocaine in the hopes I could use it like lidocaine. A guardsman came by as the setting sun had turned my bare room into tangerine light and soft grey shadow. His arms were full of the sorcerer Quentain's books and I thumbed through them. For the most part, I was unable to read the symbolic writing of Zaibach, but it gave me an idea of how far along they were in terms of medical discoveries. The anatomical drawings were fairly accurate, but they seemed to have a complicated belief system about power and magic. I resolved to ask Folken more about it later.

"I think it will take more than one evening to learn medicine," a crisp voice said. I leapt up from my book. Standing in the exact same place in the same pose against the doorframe, it was as though Dilandau hadn't moved.

"How long have you been there?" I asked. He just smiled, his canines were so long, and he sauntered into the room with murder sketched plainly on his face. He was between me and the door.

"I meant what I said before," he whispered.

In a sudden pulse, I felt his profound anger and rage. It had nothing to do with me; it was woven tightly into the fabric of his soul. There was a girl too, I saw her long black hair in the time it took to blink an eye, and the grief he felt at her loss was so overwhelming that tears sprang into my eyes.

"Who was she?" I whispered. His face whitened and he froze.

"How the fuck did you know that you _witch_?" I didn't have words, the thoughts coming at me from him were so intense that I wasn't able to process them.

"It appears you might not be entirely useless after all." He had mastered his emotions quickly and now his face bore a cool sneer. He left as quietly as he had come, leaving me standing alone in a room bare other than a pile of books.


	5. Chief Complaint: Anxiety

Chief Complaint: Anxiety

I thought about what had happened with Dilandau as I lay in bed. It had been so strange. It was almost as though he had sent me an image; that his snarling brain was laid bare before me. As I recalled the memory, I realized that I knew more about him than I had thought initially. I knew that he had no one in his life, no mother, no sibling, only his men. The only time that he was not choked with anger and bitterness was when he was fighting and killing. He had insomnia and most nights drank himself to sleep, to stop the images of fear, death and sorrow. I tried to find out more about the girl with black hair, but she was locked down tight.

I also discovered that I knew that the name of the airship was the Vione, and that I didn't get lost anymore. I knew that when we stopped that day for supplies that the town was called Escarit, and that it was a small town on the border of Zaibach and Astoria. This was extremely unnerving, and I had a full-blown panic attack in my little bare office. I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't understand anything that was happening to me. I bit my lip to try to stop crying, but the hot tears began to make their way down my cheeks. I placed my hands on the bench that was built into the wall in front of the big window, and my arms began to shake violently. The green fabric of my new dress made a quivering sound. I was wearing some ridiculous Zaibach outfit with ridiculous long sleeves that wound up outside my room with my breakfast. I hadn't had time to process any of this; I felt like a stranger to myself.

There was a timid knock on my door. I quickly snuffled back my tears and wiped my face. The embroidery on the sleeves was itchy and rough. I opened the door a crack, and was immediately pushed out of the way and the door slammed shut. It was the little blonde soldier. He was about my height, his face was innocent and scrubbed clean. He was plainly very, very nervous. His name was Chesta; apparently the names of the soldiers had also been given to me along with geography and the names of the demons that haunted Dilandau.

He looked around my empty room.

"Can I help you?" I asked, my face and shoulder hurting from where Chesta had hit me with a door.

"I-" he glanced around the room again. From the heights of a full blown panic attack, I sank gratefully into a very familiar situation. I took him by the arm and sat him on the window bench.

"What brings you here today Chesta?" I asked, taking a seat beside him on the bench. He didn't question why I knew his name.

"I heard that you were a doctor, and I always hated seeing the sorcerer, but Lord Dilandau said not to see you."

"Well, luckily for you as part of my job, I can't tell anyone about things that we discuss in here, so don't worry. I'm not going to tell Lord Dilandau that you've been to see me." He visibly relaxed. He unzipped his military coat and placed it carefully on the window seat and stood in front of me. He lifted the undershirt and pointed to a large red birthmark. It was the kind of birthmark called a port wine stain, and it covered most of his right thorax.

"What's this?"

"It's a birthmark."

"I knew it. Miguel said I had been marked from birth by a witch and it would slowly cover my whole body and I'd turn into a puddle of blood." He seemed bravely resigned to this fate.

"No one is turning into a puddle of blood. It's just that some of your blood vessels near the skin proliferated. It's ok. They aren't uncommon and nothing bad will happen." The relief on his face was almost comical.

"How old are you?"

"Fifteen." A fifteen year old soldier. He was just a baby.

"Are you the youngest?"

"Yes Lady." I gently corrected him with my title.

"What's this bump on my neck?" He jabbed his finger at his sternocleidomastoid. I felt a plump, mobile lymph node.

"It's just a tiny gland that helps the body fight infections. See, I have one too." I brought his hand up to the side of my neck, "Do you feel that thing that feels like a raisin?"

I decided that I would try to get a pulse from him, the same kind that I felt from Dilandau. I made a show of listening to his heart with a stethoscope, meanwhile trying to feel his thoughts. I screwed up my eyes and concentrated really hard, but I got nothing.

"Everything looks good from a quick exam. But we really should get you all in here one by one and I can do a detailed exam."

"That sounds like a good idea," Chesta nodded and slid his coat back on. I had won his trust and he felt better. I had a hunch that Chesta would be a frequent flyer to my little office because of his anxiety.

There wasn't much to do, so I wandered out into the hangar. The Vione was docked, much the same way that a hot air balloon is, outside of Escarit. The hangar doors opened out onto a field, and the air was the humid evening air of late summer. The mecha hung in their docking bays like bats, and the first time two flew in I almost screamed. First of all, they moved _fast_. They were agile too, and the machines docked into what I thought was an absurdly small area with ease. They looked evil and gave me the chills. The front portion lifted and my captor Miguel got out of the first one. Docking closely behind him was Gatti, whom I recognized as the one that actually brought me from the field where they found me. Guimel with his curly white blonde hair and startling green eyes and Brocet who had similar coloring but straight hair joined up with them on one the of the suspended decks of the hanger. It was strange knowing all of their names but it made them less frightening.

As the sun was beginning to set, a train of wagons began to labor up from the village. The beasts that pulled them were the size of houses and when they bleated it was the sound of the entire brass section of an orchestra.

Once they had pulled into the hangar and I had gotten my fill of these large animals with their potent odor, I retired briefly to my room and lay down. I was startled when I heard a loud knock on my door, and before I could respond Folken opened it.

"I want you to see this," he said and I had to run to catch up with him. There were all manner of boxes being brought into the formerly empty room that I had come to think of as my office, with more being brought in by the faceless Vione guardsmen. As I looked around, two guardsman labored in carrying a very large desk.

"Well, where do you want it? This room is yours," Folken said. I gestured to the left-hand corner of the room close by the door. Behind that they placed a huge cabinet with glass-fronted doors and many small drawers. My exam table came in while I was unpacking a box full of brutal-looking surgical instruments that looked in need of immediate sterilization. It was made just as Folken had drawn and I had described. The wood had the rawness of being freshly cut, and it was upholstered in deep red leather. It had the extension that you could pull out at the end, and the back was adjustable.

"Is it as you desired?" Folken asked, and I nodded. This I had them place in the back right corner of the room.

"How did you get all of this?" I asked as I unpacked another box, this one filled with small vials, some filled with liquid, others with dried plants.

"I bought the apothecary."

"But what are they going do for medical care?" I asked, pointing out my window where Escarit was a black outline against a dusky purple twilight.

"I bought his retirement, so he didn't much care," Folken said tersely. He had been acting strangely since we came to the room. He was pleased that I was pleased, and he thought that the exam table had come out smartly, which was important to him. But I would catch him looking out the window with a distant gaze and his mood oscillated at high frequency, one minute yelling at a guardsman, the next calling me over to explain what such-and-such an implement was used for.

I enjoyed organizing my room, trying to forestall the panic of being the chief medical officer for an entire airship with only one partial year of residency under my belt. It came together nicely though, giving me a small push of confidence. On the left as you entered the room I had made a little fortress of the glass fronted cabinet, my desk, and a book shelf. In front of that a cot, then my huge horizontal window that stretched the length of the wall with its deep bench in front where I arranged the medicinal plants. One was definitely St. John's wart, and I made a mental note to obtain some foxglove. My exam table and a few extra chairs were lined against the opposite side of the room, along with a large lamp that emitted white light, not blue. Folken helped to organize, although he would often get distracted by the medical textbooks as he came across them. At length, when he saw the two moons beginning to raise, he stood up and stretched.

"As pleasant as this has been, I am afraid that there is still much work ahead for me tonight."

"I'm sorry." It was a Midwestern empathetic sorry and also an apology, because where I'm from we apologize for everything. I bent over three sets of dried stems that looked to me identical however had been labeled with different characters. I startled when he put his hand, the warm one, on my shoulder and I stood to look at him. Our bodies were fairly close together and I resisted the urge to back up. His gaze was searching, as though looking for something in my face that would ameliorate the sadness. He did not find what he was looking for, evidently, and he squeezed my shoulder and left the room. I stayed up a while later to finish my work, and when I shut the door, it was with a sense of completion and progression. I had built my new life on the skeleton of the old one.


	6. Battle Plans

There was blood everywhere. I ran down vivid dark corridors and into a dusty courtyard. There was a small dagger in my hand, which was the hand of a child's, and it was covered in blood. My hands felt sticky as the blood, her blood, dried. The child I had just murdered rose slowly after she rattled out her last breath, and fixed her blue eyes on me with an unblinking stare. She hunted me. She prowled through corridors with a hobbling, three-limbed gait, using both of her arms and hopping forward with the leg I had not maimed. I was extremely exposed in the courtyard and I could feel eyes crawling over me. I couldn't bring myself to go back inside because I didn't know where she was, and now that she was dead, I knew that I couldn't kill her again.

I awoke in a sweat with my heart pounding. The dream had been very disturbing but it was quickly fading. I wandered out to the hanger. Two of the mecha were missing; they had been flying two-by-two since yesterday afternoon. I had the feeling now that they were looking for something.

The sun was raising on the side of the ship opposite my office, and I watched as the light slowly spread over an apocalyptic landscape. Everything was charred down to ash; the ponds looked thick and oily. From up here I couldn't see the bodies but I knew that they were there. This had been Fanelia, and this was Folken's home. The revelation sunk in over several seconds. I must've picked this up from Folken last night, and when the knowledge was needed my brain was able to retrieve it. It explained his mood. I searched for anything else, but all I saw was the Fanelia that was, a little kingdom deep in the forest, full of lovely clear streams and sylvan glades. Now all was ash.

I was jolted out of my train of thought by the sudden clanging of bells from the direction of the hanger. I had heard two mecha docking not five minutes ago, but after yesterday it just became a regular marker of the hours. I ran out to where the soldiers were gathering. Guimel and Chesta climbed out of their machines.

"What did you find?" Miguel asked of them.

"We think we found it," Chesta said, a little breathless with excitement.

"Should we go get Lord Dilandau?" asked Gatti. Guimel nodded and Gatti sprinted away.

"We were poking around the Astorian border, and we found a guymelef that favors escaflowne," Guimel said to his comrades.

"What is it?" Dilandau asked and the men immediately stiffened and filed into a line.

"We found the dragon, Sir," Guimel answered. Dilandau's eyes widened and his silver eyebrows shot up. Chesta remained quiet and deferred to Guimel

"Go on."

"It's in the 'melef mews of an Astorian Caeli outpost, disguised."

"I explicitly told you not to cross into Astoria," Dilandau said slowly, "You are telling me that you defied my orders?" Chesta looked an inch from vomiting and Guimel ground his teeth but met Dilandau's eye.

"We did Sir. We crossed into Astoria." There was a long, tense silence.

"And we found the dragon," Guimel whispered. There was a shadow of a smile on his face. His head was lowered, but he looked up at Dilandau. He was just a little bit cocky, for finding what the others could not. He was the second of the Dragon Slayers to be recruited, and had been at Dilandau's side for about a year and a half. He was fully confident that he would not be punished.

I leapt into the air at the crack of leather against skin. Guimel stumbled back, his hand to his cheek, but his elbow was caught quickly by Gatti who discretely pulled him back to upright.

"Never disobey my direct order again."

"Never, Sir," Guimel whispered, a vivid red hand print against the pallor of his cheek.

"That said, I have grown sick of waiting. We are hunting tonight, boys!" Smiles slowly spread across their faces, and Dilandau left. I followed.

"What are you doing?"

"If there are battle plans, I need to know them." Dilandau stopped and turned to face me slowly, his arms crossed.

"Why?"

"I need to be ready."

"Well, I guess it's better than Quentain ever did," Dilandau shrugged and continued marching on ahead of me.

We arrived at the door to Folken's study. Dilandau beat on it once with a closed fist and threw the door open with more force than was entirely necessary. Folken gave no sign of surprise at our loud entrance, indeed, he didn't even look up from the document he was reading.

"What do you want Dilandau?" he asked in an exasperated tone.

"We've found him." Pride infused his voice; it was strange to hear it sound almost warm. Folken pushed his documents back and straightened to look at him. He gave me a fractional nod.

"You are sure?"

"Yes. It is disguised, hidden at that Caeli fortress on the other side of the border."

"This complicates things," Folken said with pursed lips, the gears in his head turning audibly. Dilandau sat in the chair opposite Folken's desk and unrolled the map that lay in the corner.

"What I'm thinking," Dilandau trailed off, his eyes darting across the map as his finger tapped against his closed lips.

"We need to be very, very subtle."

"Obviously."

"I'm being serious, Dilandau. Poorly handled and we will have war on our doorstep before we are properly ready."

"Good. I'm sick of all this waiting and diplomacy."

"You misunderstand. You are so brash, ever eager to jump into the fray. We must exercise restraint. Aston is old and has no sons. He has everything to gain from a well-placed marriage with Zaibach."

"So the rumors are true, then," Dilandau said, leaning back in the chair with a leer on his face, "The rumors about you and the ugly daughter. I thought she was a priestess to Jeture? Is old Aston that desperate?"

"Nothing has been decided in that regard," Folken said firmly. It was plain to me that he wanted nothing further discussed in my presence.

"Fine fine. I was only having a little fun with you Strategos. You are so fucking serious all the time. I well understand the need to not get into a pissing match with Allen Schezar."

"Indeed. No pissing matches."

"We will just pay them a little visit, shake them up a little bit."

"Schezar can ill afford another mark against him. I imagine that harboring a fugitive from us without the consent of his king and supervisors would cost him dear."

"He was the one that was sniffing around the youngest princess' skirts, was he not? Sent away to the border before he could get her with a bastard?"

"Indeed."

"So it's settled. We'll go down there this afternoon, then set up a perimeter and wait."

They stood and seemed surprised to see me still standing by the door. As part of my medical training, I am very good at becoming invisible.

"Doctor, what can I do for you?"

"I-well actually there's a few things I need to discuss with you. I can be brief if you are busy." Dilandau decided that this conversation was of no consequence to him and pushed past me.

"I would like to see the kitchens." Thus far, my diet consisted of heavily salted meats, bread, and the occasional soup. Recipe for gout.

"That can be done. Is there anything else?"

"Before an acute illness or anything like that, I would like to do a history and physical on the people that I will be seeing."

"I will draw up a schedule and distribute it to the Dragon Slayers."

"I assume I will be seeing kitchen staff, guardsmen, and mechanics as well?"

"If the need arises. I would prefer that you did not focus your energy on ancillary staff."

"I also need animals."

"Animals?"

"Yes, like mice or rats."

"We usually trap them and throw them over, but I will have them brought to you instead." I nodded and stood.

"Oh and Doctor?" a trace of a smile tugged at Folken's lips, "I much enjoyed yesterday. It was the very highlight of my day." I nodded and abruptly left. I didn't want to see whatever was playing through his mind, and I hoped speed would prevent me from knowing, as though thoughts were contagion.

In the safety of my office, I sat on top of my desk and watched as the ashen landscape became progressively greener. I wasn't ready for that look in Folken's eye and the things that went along with those looks, and I was nervous. Right now, I believed that I had established myself as a person to be respected, and for this I wouldn't be touched. I had just broken up with Will, and all of the newness and activity served as an excellent way to not deal with that. I'm very good at not dealing with emotional matters.

I'd had a few boyfriends before, and usually I broke things off. A function of skipping grades was that everyone was always older than me, and Justin, my first boyfriend, had me by two years. He was not the sharpest tool in the shed, so to speak, and we started repeating conversations by our second month. He was very hurt when I broke up with him, and in retrospect, I really was quite cold about it. Then came a couple of random dates in college, nights out, things like that. College became very isolating after sophomore year because I still couldn't drink legally and everyone else could. They'd go down to Bourbon Street and I'd stay in my dorm and study for my MCATS. The summer after a lonely junior year I did a medical research internship in Madison. The cooler Wisconsin summer was welcome after years spent in the humid and muggy swamps of Louisiana. There I met Will, a biomedical engineer. He was Mormon, so we spent a lot of time together not drinking. His faith was deep, but his hormones were stronger, and it was ok because we were going to get married, right? Now that I thought about it, our relationship had been going downhill for quite sometime and I think Will did everything to save both the relationship and probably his soul. Instead of marking our decline with fights, we marked it with quiet distance, a slow pulling apart. Decay.

It's not that I didn't enjoy falling in love, it was the feeling of being out of control here that scared me. And to be truthful, I didn't even think of him or Dilandau as human men. I stood and walked over the mirror that had apparently been in the apothecary's shop and tried to look at myself through a man's eyes.

I tried to unsee my large, narrow nose, like an axe blade across my face. My eyes, which have a somewhat almond shape, are the color of battery acid or possibly radioactivity. My eyes are too big for my face, and whenever I tried in college to make my eyes dark and mysterious with makeup I would up looking like I had been punched in the face. My hair is wiry, coarse, and reddish in color and almost always pulled back into a pony tail. I'm short, with very small breasts. My skin is exactly what you would expect the skin of someone with the last name of O'Connor to look like; very pale with lots of small red freckles. On the whole, underwhelming.

Overall, I didn't like this current train of thought, alternately feeling nervous and ugly. I set out my bandages and suture. I played around with different suspensions of cocaine in saline. I really needed to get experimental animals.

I heard the guymelefs deploy in the early afternoon and watched them fly in eerie formation. I couldn't see the fort, but presumably it was there. All afternoon we waited. The Vione was unusually quiet, and it was hard for me to concentrate on the titration that I was doing. Evening settled in, and from what I had gathered this was when the attack was supposed to start. I made my slow way to the bridge of the airship. Of course I had never been there before, but Dilandau had so I was able to find it. This room had giant, multi-story windows and a myriad of controls. Folken sat in a chair in the middle of the room and appeared surprised to see me. He insisted that I take a seat beside him, and asked someone for another cup of tea.

Settled with my tea in my hand, I inched my chair back from Folken. I could tell he was unnerved and distracted by my being next to him unannounced, so I made myself as inconspicuous as possible, a skill that I gained with long practice. I needed him distracted the better to experiment with my new skill. I let my eyes go unfocused, staring into the distance.

It wasn't that I could hear his thoughts, it was just that I picked up on certain things. It was hard and I tried to concentrate with all my might. It's easier to get in and poke around if the person to whom I'm listening was experiencing some kind of intense emotion, like Dilandau's anger and Guimel's apprehension and pride. This was harder too because Folken's thoughts were wandering. Finally, I stopped trying so hard and relaxed.

He was restless. This was in large part because he hated Dilandau and was convinced that he would screw this up. This hatred went deep, and encompassed both numerous arguments and insubordinations, as well as open disgust for what Dilandau was. Not who he was, mind you, but what.

Associated with these thoughts was the image of that girl. She had thick black hair, ivory skin, grey eyes. She was very, very pretty. Other than her image though, I could glean nothing else.

He was also irritated because he was uncomfortable with the substantial portion of him that didn't want them to capture Van, and feared for him at Dilandau's hand. He resolved to kill Dilandau, quietly and efficiently, if Van died. The image of Dilandau with large white hands, one that was ivory and wire, around his throat gave Folken a sense of justice, and increased his comfort with the idea of taking his own brother captive.

My eyes snapped back into focus and I stared at Folken. His own brother? To be fair, I poorly understood the politics here and should know more before I came to some kind of snap judgment. Before I could learn anything else, one to the haptmen cried out and pointed out the window. There was a fire; the fort was burning.

"Patch me in," Folken commanded. The room became full with the sounds of heavy breathing. It made me uncomfortable in that it was the kind of intimate sounds that lovers make.

"Dilandau, what are you doing?" Folken asked.

"I'm smoking him out, Strategos."

"What if I told you that he wasn't there? What if I told you that they were escaping right now, by the waterfall in the cliffs behind the castle?"

"They're behind the castle?" Dilandau began to bark orders: you here, you there. The guymelefs uncloaked and began to fly. There was a small airship, I was impressed that Folken had seen it at all, that was creeping low along the course of the river. The Zaibach guymelefs began to harass it, and suddenly there was a white guymelef. I couldn't see the details of it, it was too far away, but I heard Folken's sharp intake of breath. There it was. The Escaflowne.

It was hard to watch, but it was strange and beautiful and terrible all at the same time. Our boys shot flame at the machine, which looked like a bird made of bones and cloth. Its flight was desperate, and I found myself subconsciously hoping that it would be able to escape. I kept telling myself, five minutes then I'll go back and get ready.

I don't know how long I watched, by I finally wrenched myself away from the control room and headed to my study. I got a pot boiling, I put the metal operating instruments in it, I had a moment of panic when I took stock of my trauma experience. Better me than that sorcerer though. The cot had wheels, so I rolled it into the empty hangar, and I waited.

I stood in this posture of readiness until I got sick of shifting my weight from foot to foot. I sat up on the cot. I was glad I was wearing the plum Zaibach dress, shapeless with lots of detail on the sleeves. I would be bummed if I got blood on my cloths from home. I hoped that none of the boys got hurt. Particularly not Chesta. He was a sweet boy, of the archetype that would be discovered once he went to college by some nice girl from a small town.


	7. Moonshine and Morphine

It was about three hours before they got back. The red 'melef landed first. Behind it came three blue ones, carrying the larger, white machine between them. This was maneuvered, not without small difficulty, into the back of the hangar. It was placed in a sitting position, with much manipulation and application of pulleys, as well as the shifting of the hanger platforms to accommodate the large machine.

As the other soldiers came in, it was plain that no one was very hurt. I wondered if perhaps it was excessive to send thirteen soldiers to catch just one man. I maneuvered my cot to where I could see the Escaflowne. Dilandau and Folken were arguing heatedly in front of the machine, while the other soliders gaped on the platform levels above where their two commanders were situated. At length, Folken approached the machine, placed his (normal) hand up to a sort of red stone embedded in the breast of the machine, which suddenly glowed an intense pink color. With a hiss of steam, something unlatched and a body spilled out.

This had happened to me on two other occasions. Someone (once at a concert and once in the check-out line at the Wal Mart) would go down and before I could wack two synapses together, I was on my knees in front of the victim (at the concert it was a girl with vomit down the front of her dress, at the Wal it was a grandma). As soon as I flung myself down in front of this boy, I abruptly moved in the wrong direction, flying upwards. Leather-clad gloves shoved me back and for a moment I actually thought that Dilandau was going to bite me.

"Stay _back_." His tone brokered no argument. I put my hands up and backed away.

The boy was young. I could tell from this distance that he was breathing but unconscious. Folken was kneeling at his side. I watched him grope for a pulse on the neck and he appeared satisfied. It was not the best way to check for a brain bleed, since this boy probably had sustained a skull fracture and while we did nothing here his brain was probably squeezing out of the base of his skull

"Well done," he said to no one, getting up from his knees, "More roughed-up than is entirely necessary, but I am pleased." He motioned for Dalet and Brocet to get the boy onto the cot and they began to wheel him away.

"I need to examine him!" I yelled, my voice strident in my ears, but they paid me no mind.

I felt frustrated and out of control as I slammed the door to my study shut. This was maddening. I picked up a glass jar, my hand becoming a claw around it as I fought with the urge to smash it on the ground. My jaw was locked tightly against the stream of cuss words bubbling up. So much for the respect I thought I'd won.

My heart stopped when noticed that half of my morphine was missing.

Yesterday, while Folken and I unpacked the apothecary's boxes, I found this vial with tiny, dark grey seeds. Folken had told me then that 'Sleeper's draught' was something that apothecaries used for insomnia. Sleeper flower, he had explained, was a very beautiful orange flower, apparently grown in a place called Freid. Monk-warriors guarded the blooms, to protect them from addicts who sometimes took so much that they died in their sleep. He was obviously describing opium, and I had immediately started to grind up the seeds and suspend them in saline. I hadn't gotten the chance to administer a test dose to the rat that came to me that afternoon. I couldn't even guess as the potency of what I had created; I had planned to administer it to the rat and to see how it did so that I could come up with a weight-based dose.

My eyes fell across the notebook on my desk where I wrote out exactly what I thought the solution would do and I experienced a moment of sheer panic. In this diary, I also sketched out the margins of my new-found power. I intended to keep my knowing a secret. My usefulness was already established, and I feared that if discovered I might be used as a weapon of war. And, should I fail as a doctor, it would be my lifeline.

But no one could read English, particularly not in my wretched penmanship. I shut my eyes tight and tried to pick up any trace of a memory, as though they were shed from our minds and I was some kind of mental forensic scientist. Of course there was nothing. I resolved to get a lock and to hide my journal. I went to bed, full of sick worry that there was someone on board with a glass of poison waiting for them.

I sat on a beach. The night was warm, and the sand sparkled under the glow of the two moons, while the sea was undulant and calm, though further out waves broke regularly against the rocky outcroppings in the bay. The sea was a negative space, save where the white caps roiled at the mouth of the bay, save for the sea foam that rode in on the tides. I was waiting and the excitement quickened my breath and stretched my tendons taut as bow strings.

A chevron of water crept towards me, the small ripples flashing brilliant silver. Emerging, her lovely face peeped out from beneath the water. My own one. Her eyes were black against the white of her skin, her face framed by thick curls. Her small shoulders peeked out of the water, and I stood, overcome with the want of her. She stopped a moment, demure, and then as she held my gaze she rose up from the surf, water dripping off her breasts, the sea coming to just her navel. I ran into the water towards her, and she came towards me. I kissed her lips, it had been so long! And I felt her warm body under my hands.

I woke myself up. The dream had taken an erotic bent, and I felt like I had been eavesdropping. Normally, when I am nervous, my dreams are in similar tenor. I dream of exams or murders or floods. I don't dream of kissing pretty girls; I wasn't normally attracted to girls. There was something off about the dream too. I was not exactly a maid at this point, and as the dream progressed the rhythm was off, like someone dancing for the first time.

In the dream I knew her, and in restless corners of my mind that never surrendered to full sleep, I recognized the face but I didn't know from where. The thought gnawed on me as I went through all the faces from college and the wards. And then I recognized her, and my whole body went cold. I leapt out of bed and began to pace.

This dream was not mine. It was Dilandau's. He must still be a virgin, explaining why some of the more intimate details of the dream were off. The girl was the one that I had seen both in his mind and in Folken's. The nightmares, those too belonged to him.

I idly wondered, based on the clarity of the dream, what base he had gotten to with this girl from the water. First base was kissing, second under the shirt, third… I stopped myself, though. This was the only thing that he had. Who was I to scrutinize the most private thoughts of his mind?

I wandered out of my room and made my way towards my office with the intent of administering my moonshine-morphine to the rat, in the hopes that I would discover that the solution had no potency. Gatti was walking down the hallway in the opposite direction towards me. I blushed just slightly, a hold over from that dream about boys and girls. He smiled uncertainly and stopped.

"Good morning! How are you?" I wasn't intending to be flirtatious but I was.

"I am doing well, lady. It is kind of you to ask. How are you?" He had a very soft voice. He was probably a year or two younger than me. There were traces of Will in him, the sandy hair and angular face. Gatti's skin was better, no acne there, and his cheekbones had been sculpted well. He had broad shoulders and was quiet tall. I came only to his sternum.

"Oh I'm doing well." I didn't want the conversation to end just yet, because as I spoke, I caught him wondering if all girls from the Mystic Moon dressed in sweater dresses, a style he found fetching. He wondered if I had forgiven him for stowing me in the cargo compartment of his machine.

"Where are you from?" I asked. This was my stock conversation opener. His face brightened and he smiled, flashing brilliant white teeth. Did they have braces here?

"I'm from Vina."

"Where's that?" I realized this was a stupid question because I didn't know where anything was.

"It's an island, closer to Astoria, actually, than Zaibach-" He continued to speak, but I was paying more attention to his thoughts.

Vina was a beautiful island, surrounded by mellow azure seas and constantly bathed in a warm breeze that tousled the tops of the palm trees. The buildings were white and stately with red terra cotta roofs. There was a particular sound in Vina when it rained, a bright percussion, when the drops bounced off of the red tiles. The stones selected to pave the streets were red and blue. Women wore silk and had pet monkeys that sat on their tanned shoulders as they strode the marketplaces and boulevards. There was money to be made in Vina, and the large bank, made of polished limestone, was the island's crown jewel.

Gatti's family was military. His father had been a Zaibach general, his grandfather an Astorian one. Mereck, Gatti's older brother, was an artillery man in General Helio's branch. Gatti at this point outranked him. This had caused a fair amount of drama within his family, as marriage prospects looked from Mereck to Gatti. The attention did not suit Gatti, used to being invisible beside his brother.

"-so the island has switched sides not a few times. In my grandfather's day, it was Astorian. They switched allegiance to Zaibach in the first few years of Emperor Dornkirk's reign."

"Dr. O'Connor, may I borrow you for perhaps a moment?" Folken asked as he strode down the hallway towards us. Gatti felt instantly embarrassed, feeling that he had spoken too much to me and made an ass out of himself, as well as feeling that he really should've hurried in getting the message he carried to Dilandau. I reached out and touched his arm, warm and leather-clad.

"It was so nice talking to you." I walked towards Folken. He smiled at me, and when he spoke it was in a calm, measured tone. However, I had the impression of anxiety so strongly from him that I too felt like I was about to vomit.

"I need your assistance with something." He walked so quickly that I could only follow behind him. He opened the door to a room, where a boy, his brother, lay on the bed as still as death.

I forgot about Folken. Van had a pulse and was breathing albeit very, very slowly. He was young, no more than fifteen or sixteen with a healthy tan stretched over lean muscles. I peeled back his eyelids. His eyes were the same color as Folken's, though with perhaps more amber. They were pinpoint.

"When did you give him the morphine?" I asked. My exam confirmed what I suspected based on Folken's anxiety and guilt. He panicked a moment, an eldest child still afraid of getting in trouble, but very quickly acknowledged my implied accusation.

"An hour, perhaps two."

"What route?"

"Excuse me?"

"How did you give him the medication?"

"Injection."

"That was really stupid. Really, really stupid. But he's going to be fine." Folken relaxed fractionally.

"Next time just ask me, ok? You could have easily killed him."

"I know." I think it took a lot for him to admit that.

"He had received some shocking news," Folken confessed, "and was angry. Agitated. I wanted for him to relax, so that we may discuss things rationally."

"Who is he?" I asked though I already knew.

"He's my brother," Folken said, with the heaviness and care of a man laying a stone on a dining table and trying not to scratch it.

"Why did you need to capture him?"

"Because he is the king that is resisting our efforts at present. I thought if I reached him first, he wouldn't have to die."

"It's a pretty weird way of trying to save someone."

"I know. He is my only blood left. I think if he could just be made to see reason, he would come to my way of thinking."

"I wouldn't send Dilandau after my worst enemy, much less my own kin."

"Well, the capture of him was commanded by General Adelphos and the Emperor himself. I'm afraid I didn't have much say in the matter."

"Ok Pontius," I muttered as I left, but Folken said nothing and stayed at the side of his brother.


End file.
